Dispatch #10
Read about pension clashes in Argentina, six centuries of Basque-Roma culture, the experiences of trafficked Southeast Asian women, and a south Italian ritual dance.
Welcome to Translator’s 10th weekly Dispatch, bringing you summaries of four compelling stories written beyond the Anglosphere.
Pensioners protest economic policies in Argentina, an exhibition marks six centuries of Basque-Roma culture, a Singaporean journalist uncovers the hidden world of trafficked Southeast Asian women in China, and a south Italian ritual dance blurs the line between suffering and euphoric liberation.
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Sold as Wives, Trapped as Strangers
A Singaporean journalist traces how Southeast Asian women are trafficked into marriage in China—and what it takes to escape
When Chan boarded the plane to China, she had no idea she was being sold. A stranger had promised her a better life: she’d heard stories of Cambodian women finding prosperity abroad through marriage. But soon after landing, her passport was taken, and she was sold to a man she had never met. Despite her refusal to marry or engage sexually, the man’s brother forced her into it. Chan wasn’t the only one. In the same rural village in China, she discovered many women from her home province of Kampong Cham, Cambodia, all caught in the same nightmare.
The article by Mu Yu for Initium Media tells the stories of Fan, from Myanmar, and Chan, from Cambodia—two of the many Southeast Asian women trafficked into China for marriage. Fan was drugged and abducted, then told she’d been “sold to China.” Her only choices were to pay a ransom or be bought by someone else.
Their experiences are not rare. According to research from the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), China is the most common destination for Cambodian women trafficked for marriage. From 2018 to 2024, Initium Media collected 488 verdicts related to the trafficking of women from Chinese court records. Of the 1,031 identified victims, two-thirds were foreign nationals, mostly from Vietnam, followed by Myanmar and Cambodia, a few from North Korea and Laos.
The UN’s 2024 Global Report on Trafficking in Persons confirms that women make up around 80% of victims identified in East Asia and the Pacific, with forced marriage as a major form of exploitation. Fan and Chan’s stories are among those referenced in regional trafficking studies.
One NGO working with survivors tells Initium that Cambodia’s deepening debt crisis is fuelling the trade—families borrow too much and see marriage migration as a way out. In Myanmar, years of civil conflict and a thriving drug economy have left women exposed and unprotected. COVID closed many trafficking routes, but others opened: via river, across Vietnam, into southern China.
Once inside China, women are stripped of documents and freedom of movement. Without ID, without language, and without local knowledge, escape is almost impossible. “China is so big,” one NGO worker says. “You can’t get around without documents. They don’t even know where they are.”
That’s part of what makes them desirable. Traffickers and buyers alike see foreign women as “easy to control”. And they pay more for them.
Southeast Asian women also command higher “prices” than their Chinese counterparts. Chan was sold for 130,000 yuan (approx. $18,000). Court records show that foreign women are sold for between 30,000 to over 100,000 yuan, while some Chinese women—particularly those with mental illness or intellectual disabilities—are sold for less than 10,000 yuan. In fact, a study of 1,038 court verdicts found that over a quarter of trafficked Chinese women had some form of mental conditions.
Multiple factors drive the price disparity: foreign women may be trafficked through more hands, adding cost, and the cross-border nature of the crime requires greater risk and expense. But the market is disturbingly organized. Traffickers include fellow nationals who deceive their victims under the guise of job or marriage offers; local villagers who facilitate crossings; and Chinese gangs who profit from reselling women. Chinese families, in turn, pay “bride prices” or “gifts” to secure these women as wives.
For women like Chan and Fan, escape is rare. Chan’s “husband” and his family had taken her passport. She was confined indoors. Though she grew to like her “husband,” his mother’s abuse made her desperate to flee. But getting out required help from others—another trafficked Cambodian woman, Chan’s neighbour, stole her husband’s credit card to buy Chan a train ticket to the Cambodian consulate in Shanghai.
Fan, on the other hand, stayed. Her “husband” was kind, and they had two children together. Like many, she chose to remain in China—torn between the desire to return home and the emotional and financial ties to her children. NGOs report that many mothers who could flee ultimately turn back because they can’t take their children with them.
This gray area—between coercion and consent—is where the legal and humanitarian response often falters. Foreign women like Chan are frequently not recognized as trafficking victims, but rather labelled as illegal immigrants. As GI-TOC’s report explains, whether a woman is seen as trafficked depends less on her experiences of abuse, and more on whether she “chose” to come to China for economic reasons. This framing misses the reality of manipulation, misinformation, and forced compliance.
In response, NGOs and researchers are urging a shift in focus: rather than just stopping trafficking at the border, support must be extended to those already in China. That includes offering them legal residency, integrating them into the civil registry, and helping them access social services. Many of these women live without legal marriage status, without access to healthcare, or the ability to work. These aren’t just victims of trafficking; they are now marginalized residents, raising children, caught between borders and bureaucracies.
This deeply reported piece by Mu Yu is a reminder that trafficking isn’t just about movement—it’s about confinement. About lives bought and sold, and the systems that let that happen. And about the rare but vital moments of resistance, when one woman helps another find a door out.
(“Fan” and “Chan” are pseudonyms.)
KLT
Original article by Mu Yu 木俞, ‘被拐賣到中國的東南亞女性：為了孩子，越來越多人選擇留下｜一分鐘數洞,’ (Southeast Asian Women Trafficked to China: More Are Choosing to Stay for Their Children | One-Minute Data Dive) was first published in Chinese on 5 March 2025 and is available here.
Mu Yu is a Singapore-based journalist, a participant of the Second Cohort of Initium Media’s Data Journalism Project, which supports young Chinese-language journalists in pursuing in-depth reporting. This is Mu Yu’s first piece—and it’s a powerful one.
Initium Media is a Chinese-language digital media outlet based in Singapore.
Remembering the dancing feet of the Basque Roma
An exhibition shines a light on six centuries of Basque-Roma culture, history and language
This year marks six centuries since the arrival of the first Roma to the Iberian peninsula. The 600-year anniversary of their arrival in the Basque Country will be celebrated in 2032, seven years from now. Yet despite this long history, Roma people remain on the margins in the Basque Country, subject to discrimination, struggling for visibility and recognition.
In an article for 7k Magazine Miren Saenz highlights how a recent exhibition at the Casa de Cultura de Aiete forms part of a wave of efforts to preserve the legacy of Roma history and culture, hoping to empower the Roma community, and bring about a long overdue reckoning for social justice.
“Don't let them recognize you as a Roma.” This was the advice given to Rafa Giménez by his father as a child when he sent him out on errands. Racism against Roma communities was embedded in the fabric of society. “When I was little, being a Roma seemed like the greatest thing in the world; but at the age of 8, at school, you’re told that being a Roma is shit, and not just by your classmates, but even the teachers get involved, and then you find yourself in a conflict of identities”, Giménez says: “Some opt for invisibility; others adapt, so as to not let themselves be recognised as a Roma.”
Giménez is the President of AGIFUGI, which can be translated as The Roma Association for the Future of Gipuzkoa, based in the San Sebastián neighborhood of Intxaurrondo. The organisation is unique even amongst other Roma associations because it is “purely Roma”, from the board directors down to its members. Giménez describes those involved as having a wide range of backgrounds, but united by their core mission: to raise awareness about Roma history and culture and, in so doing, to empower them. They are “very activist”, Giménez says: culture and heritage as a way to demand recognition of their human rights, while fighting against racism and fascism.
It’s as part of this mission that the group collaborated on the exhibition ‘Pindro Dantzariz. The Roma People in Gipuzkoa’. The title ‘Pindro Dantzariz’ – meaning “dancing feet” in Erromintxela, the language spoken by the Basque Roma – is taken from a poem by Jon Mirande. These "dancing feet" represent the mythological origins of Roma nomadic culture; and it is these same dancing feet which have taken them all across the different parts of Euskal Herria. Giménez estimates between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma live in the Basque Country, 2,500 of them in Gipuzkoa. Several experts were brought in to lead the curation of the exhibition, including photographer Juantxo Egaña and historian David Martín whose texts chronicling the history of the Basque Roma can be read in the exhibition. (David Martin’s 2017 book on the subject is available here).
The focus on Gipuzkoa in the exhibition title conceals the true scope of its ambitions. The exhibition portrays the Roma people all over the Basque Country, covering the long journey of migration from the fifteenth century though to the present day. The earliest images date from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and span various locations across the region, from the ‘Jito Alai’ – the Roma pelota court that still stands in the town of Iruñea (known in Spanish as Pamplona) – to photographs taken in Bilbao by the first Basque photographer, Eulalia Abaitua. (Some of these photographs are reproduced in the article).
Gathering material for the exhibition proved challenging due to material realities of Roma existence as persecuted and nomadic peoples, and also certain Roma traditions, such as the custom of burning the possessions and photographs of loved ones after they have passed away. Egaña initially asked 40 different photographers if they had any archive photography of Roma communities, to which they all initially responded negatively. However, after searching through their archives just over half came back with at least some material to contribute.
For Giménez, “this exhibition is a way of making the Roma people visible—I'd say normal—seeking a rapprochement, a way of being part of society, which is how it should be. Generally, institutions tend to approach us as exotic, folkloric, a stereotyping that places us outside the boundaries of natural, normal coexistence.” Challenging this status-quo, his ambition is to create a cultural reset: “In the association, we talk about Roma culture, but also about erasure through assimilation. Until 1978, we didn’t have our own legal identity; simply being Roma had consequences. We are resilient people; we have had to adapt to survive through different eras.”
The long history of Roma persecution in the Basque Country and in Spain - itself part of a much wider European phenomenon described in a recent book here – is embedded in the Spanish name historically used to describe them: ‘Gitano’, a pejorative term which shares the negative connotations of the English ‘Gypsy’. David Martín explains that the first records mentioning the ‘Gitano’ people in the Basque country date back to the 15th century: a court document in which Queen Blanche of Navarre granted refuge to Thomas, Count of Lesser Egypt and his companions (a reproduction of which is available the exhibition.) More recent Roma history is marked by dark tragedy, including the Samudaripen, "the great massacre" of Roma in the Second World War. Many Basque and Spanish Roma who had taken refuge in France during the Spanish Civil War later passed through the Gurs internment camp in Béarn on their way to extermination at the hands of the Nazis.
But anti-Roma sentiment is not simply a historical matter, the article points out. It pervades mainstream Spanish and Basque culture today. Festivals such as the Caldereros de San Sebastián and Maskarada de Zuberoa include traditions that offensively caricature Roma people. As Martín explains: “The image of the gypsy during these festivities is a mixture of joy, color, and freedom, but also of poverty and marginalization, reflecting contradictory stereotypes and prejudices in Basque society”. Another section of the exhibition describes how the heroin epidemic of the 1980s ravaged not only the Basque region, but the Roma community specifically.
Despite all this, the exhibition purposefully ends on a note of optimism. These are the words of Palmira Dual, a champion of Roma women's rights from the Kera association, displayed at its end: "We Roma youth want to represent the Roma people wherever we go. Education is the key. Studies are not only a way to achieve professional success, but are a tool to win social, economic and political power. Through education, we can take ourselves to great places, always carrying our community as our flag.”
The resilience of Roma communities is a source of great pride. The exhibition offers an opportunity to honour the richness and diversity of Basque Roma lives, both in the past and now.
TMH
The original article by Miren Saenz was published in Basque on February 2, 2025
It is available here: Visita al universo del pueblo vasco-gitano, el gran descocido
7k Magazine is an imprint of the Basque news site Naiz.
The People vs. Javier Milei
What recent pension clashes reveal about Javier Milei’s political project - and Argentina
When Argentina is discussed in international news, it’s often as an economic basket case. (To what extent this is part of a narrative which explains – or is used to justify – the draconian neoliberal policies pursued by Javier Milei is something you’ll have to judge for yourself, Dear Reader).
Much less talked about is the fact that Argentina is one of few places where social movements and democratic movements from below continue to be a factor in the nation’s politics. (Ni Una Menos—the feminist grassroots movement which originated as a spontaneous protest against gendered violence, and whose greatest win was the approval of state-sanctioned abortion law in 2020—must be the most known and inspiring recent case in point.) An article by Macarena Romero and Diego Murzi with photographs by Nicolás Suárez, entitled ‘Un tiro a la democracia’ (Taking Aim at Democracy), perfectly illustrates this history, bookended by the horrific story of Pablo Grillo, a local photojournalist.
On the one hand, it chronicles the targeted attack on Grillo by the police. It details the way Grillo sustained severe head injuries, and even lost brain mass, from a tear gas projectile shot at him whilst he was covering clashes over pension cuts. It also notes how Grillo was subsequently singled out by the interior minister Patricia “El Pato” Bullrich, scapegoating him as a dangerous “militant”. On the other hand, the piece makes clear how the protests are themselves the expression of a long history of militancia; just as the police repression with which they were met forms part of a historical pattern, coherent with Milei’s stated objective to crack down on any form of dissent.
(Translator notes that not long after these clashes took place, on March 24, the day that Argentinians commemorate the victims of the military dictatorship which ran the country from 1976 to 1983, a video was circulated by the government ramming the point home. In it, right wing ‘intellectual’ Agustín Laje expounded the laughable, historically illiterate thesis according to which state terror which resulted in the disappearance of roughly 30,000 people was a commensurate, justified response to the threat presented by a Peronist, left-wing guerrilla group, the Montoneros.)
By combining the personal narratives of two activist retirees with invaluable additional context, the piece in particular explains the strange alliance of jubilados and hinchas – Argentinian slang for pensioners and football fans – spearheading the protests. The alliance was not simply the result of a common love of Maradona—who, as a defender of the working class, is nonetheless an iconic point of reference both on and off the streets.
Rather, this heterogenous coalition is the result of shared grievances deriving from Milei’s austerity measures, and his disciplinarian attempt to tear apart the fabric of Argentinian society. As the article makes clear, pensioners have long been subject to policies that have eroded their purchasing power in a country plagued by inflation – but Milei’s shock therapy has hit them the hardest. At the same time, football clubs—which in Argentina are still run as non-profit members’ associations and, as such, are one of the main expressions of civil society and democratic governance—have long been under the threat of privatisation. Talks of turning them into private companies ripe for foreign investment have only intensified under Milei. One of his first actions as new president in 2023—as if to announce regime change in the most symbolically charged way possible—was to publicly endorse his political ally, Mauricio Macri who was running in the vote to become the new president of the Boca Juniors sports’ cub on precisely such a promise. (Macri lost to the incumbent, legendary Argentinian number 10 and popular idol Riquelme; Milei was booed by club members when he went to cast his own vote).
The article also details how football fans have been subjected to stricter security measures and police violence in an attempt to curb the power and reach of barras bravas (groups of ultra football fans which have long metastasised into criminal syndicates). And how Bullrich has threatened to extend these measures, including lifelong stadium bans, as a way to scare ordinary football fans away from expressing solidarity with pensioners, delegitimising their political activism as the work of ‘thugs’.
One should be careful not to over-romanticise faraway struggles, but the piece clearly points to how central grassroots organising is to Argentinian democracy, and why Milei might be so adamant about extirpating it in all its forms.
BS
This article, written by Macarena Romero and Diego Muziz, with photographs by Nicolás Suárez, was originally published in Spanish in Revista Anfibia under the title Un Tiro a la Democracia on March 13 2025. You can find the article here.
Macarena Romero is a political scientist and Diego Muniz is a social scientist in Argentina. Nicolás Suárez is a freelance photographer based in Buenos Aires.
Revista Anfibia is an Argentinian digital publication and media platform founded in 2012 in the National University of San Martín, covering all kinds of issues with exuberance and creativity.
Dancing Mania
An exploration of the interplay between affliction and ecstasy in a south Italian ritual dance
In the sun-scorched landscapes of southern Italy, particularly in Puglia, the country’s heel, a unique cultural phenomenon has historically transformed personal affliction into communal ecstasy.
The ritualistic practice of tarantism is, at its core, a symbolic rendering of the supposed bodily response to the bite of a tarantula spider, believed to induce a state of lethargy and melancholy in its victims, often characterised by “a sudden fall to the ground in a state of semi-death” with the afflicted remaining on the ground… until the music begins. Then, through frenetic dance, music, and vibrant displays of colour, individuals seek not only relief from their immediate physical ailments but a deeper transcendent release, blurring the lines between suffering and euphoric liberation.
In an article in Quants Magazine entitled Il tarantismo nella terra del rimorso (Tarantism in the land of remorse) writer Sara Ricci explores the historical and cultural dimensions of tarantism, drawing upon the seminal ethnographic work of Ernesto De Martino.
During the summer of 1959, De Martino led a multidisciplinary team to the town of Galatina in Puglia to study the intricacies of tarantism at first hand. The team observed the afflicted, known as tarantati, engaged in hours-long dances to the rhythms of tambourines and violins. In the logic of the ritual, as they understood it, this cathartic movement served as an exorcism of the venom's symbolic grip, with the music's tempo dictating the intensity of the dancers' motions. The ritual often unfolded in sacred spaces such as the chapel of St. Paul in Galatina, where participants might seek divine Christian intervention for their maladies at other times.
Ricci emphasises De Martino and his team did not take tarantism as a medical or psychological condition, as some had, but rather as a deeply embedded, complex, socio-religious institution. They observed how the rituals incorporated symbolic elements – specific melodies, colours, and objects, such as swords and mirrors – that play crucial roles in a genuinely therapeutic process. Like all rituals, they are not merely decorative – in principle and in origin, at least, they serve a function. These components facilitate a symbolic reenactment of both the spider's bite and the subsequent healing journey. Most importantly, and more deeply, they allow individuals to navigate personal crises within a structured communal framework.
The term “Land of Remorse” as explored by De Martino and discussed by Ricci, links the cyclical nature of unresolved personal conflicts to the natural cycles in the harsh southern Italian environment. The “re-bite” of the tarantula symbolises the recurrence of internal struggles which the ritual aims to address and alleviate. Tarantism is positioned as a culturally sanctioned avenue for confronting and resolving deep-seated emotional turmoil.
While traditional tarantism has waned, its legacy endures in contemporary cultural expressions. Festivals such as La Notte della Taranta held each August in Salento, celebrate this rich heritage by blending traditional pizzica folk music - you can listen to some here – with modern influences, ensuring that the legacy of the ‘tarantati’ continues to resonate in the collective memory through celebration and music.
ZN
The original article by Sara Ricci was published in Italian in January 2025.
It is available here: ‘Il tarantismo nella terra del rimorso’, Quants Magazine.
Quants Magazine is an Italian-language online publication covering a diverse range of topics, including culture, history, and society.
That’s all for now—keep an eye out for our next dispatch of translated summaries this time next week!
The Translator team